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Family still reeling from 9/11 double blow

"Even then it was almost incomprehensible to know that they were both there," said Barbara Harrell.

Today it is no less so.

Three years ago, on Sept. 11, 2001, brothers Harvey and Stephen Harrell, both lieutenants with the New York City Fire Department, were lost in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.

Lt. Harvey Harrell of New Dorp, also known as Buddy, was 49 when he died. A 22-year veteran of the FDNY, he was with Rescue Co. 5 in Concord and was one of 11 members lost from the firehouse on Clove Road.

Lt. Stephen Harrell of upstate Warwick, a musician of local note, was 44 when he died. He was with Ladder Co. 10, across the street from the World Trade Center, and his company was among the first to respond to the attack on Tower 1.

Stephen's body was later recovered. Buddy was never found.

But as sister Cyndie Harrell Casserly said, "They both had to know the other was there, and Buddy always made sure Stephen got home."

DOUBLE LOSS

Today the Harrell family, back in the Midland Beach neighborhood where the brothers grew up, continues to deal with the grief of a double loss.

"When you lose two of your siblings, it's like the chain has been broken," said Ms. Harrell. "Every day is Sept. 11. It's always Sept. 11."

And yet Ms. Harrell, Mrs. Casserly and their father, Harvey Lee Harrell, say there is some measure of comfort in knowing that the brothers were where they needed to be.

"Their job was to save people," said Mr. Harrell of his sons. "That is what they were supposed to be doing. They went into those buildings disregarding everything, trying to save people. Heroes is what they were."

"My brothers lived and breathed the Fire Department," said Mrs. Casserly. "It was always 'the job, the job.' You think to yourself, oh, if only they were someplace else that day. On the highway headed home, at the mall shopping. But if you knew my brothers, you couldn't picture them being anywhere else that day."

NO CLOSURE

Some comfort, perhaps, said Ms. Harrell, but no closure.

"You can say that it is double the grief, and it is," said Ms. Harrell. "And you can say that it is not fair, and you'd be right. It is almost more than a human being can bear. But I don't think it's fair that anybody should suffer the loss of a single person. Not us, not anybody. Every single person who died that day three years ago died for no good reason, other than hate. So there really is no such thing as closure."

"Sometimes you think, if one of them had come home it would have made things easier," added Ms. Harrell. "Whoever came home would never have let us fall apart."

"But how could one have come back without other?" continued Mrs. Casserly. "I can't imagine how either of them would have felt, if one had come back and the other hadn't."

ALWAYS TOGETHER

The Harrells have always stuck together, the sisters said. And when it came to Buddy and Stephen, they were the "twin towers" of the Harrell family, Mrs. Casserly said.

"They kept everything together," she said. "They were the main support beams of the family. When they left, they took a lot of us with them."

"They were the light," said Ms. Harrell. "They were our enthusiasm. We were like a puzzle. Buddy and Stephen, our brother Dave, Cyndie and myself. All the pieces fit into place. We don't have that any more."

Their mother, the late Miriam Harrell, never really recovered from the loss of two of her sons on the same day at the hands of terrorists. She died in December.

And their father still cries easily over the tragedy.

'BAD DAYS'

"To this day I'm a head case," said Mrs. Casserly. "It never leaves you. It's like the ground you walk on will never be the same. We all still have a lot of bad days."

"A lot of bad days," said Ms. Harrell. "Some good days. But you never have a single day without a lot of bad moments."

On Sept. 11, 2001, the sisters said they hoped against hope that their brothers would call.

"You just wait and wait for the phone call," said Ms. Harrell. "You say, well, they can't call because they're busy doing their jobs. They can't call because no one's cell phones are working. They can't call because there is chaos going on. Our mindset was, we are going to hear from them. They are going to call."

Then, in the days that followed, Ms. Harrell said she "kept holding out for a miracle, that somehow the rescuers were going to open up a hole and people were just going to walk out of there, and my two brothers were going to be among them."

Said Ms. Harrell: "My brothers were trained as firefighters. They were trained to put out fires. But this was an attack on our country. They were not trained for that. This was a fire that they could never have put out."

"All I know is," added Ms. Harrell, wiping away tears, "my brothers had three daughters between them. Three little girls. And my brothers are never going to get to dance at their little girls' weddings."

Judy L. Randall is a columnist for the Advance. She may be reached at randall@siadvance.com.